1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to methods and a system for identifying, recording and processing data relating to a recipient and user of products and services ordered from a company, which runs a bonus program.
2. Description of the Related Art
Companies and/or vendors sell their products and services utilizing various marketing strategies, such as advertising, leaflets, catalogues etc., so as to inform the user of the availability of particular products, their degree of quality/purity and the price, to obtain continuous consideration by the potential customer. In addition, many companies offer their customers a variety of different discounts, rebates, coupons; extended warranties, and other purchasing incentives via so-called “loyalty programs”. These programs may include means of different complexity, such as simple punch-cards or multi-partner retail plans. In principle, according to these programs a customer is awarded a certain bonus-credit for the purchase of a given product/service, which bonus-credit is recorded in an account assigned to the purchaser and which bonus may be used to obtain certain products or other services from the company or affiliated organizations.
The main objective of these loyalty programs is to increase “brand-loyalty” and customer retention, while also providing the offering company or organization marketing data on their consumer base.
Examples for these kind of programs are Frequent Flyer Programs offered by Air Lines or analogous programs offered by Hotel groups and Rental Car companies. According to other methods, modern forms of discounts are applied, which include an immediate credit at the time of purchase, a well known example for which is the so called pay-back card.
Systems and methods for offering such incentives are known in the art involving the registration of a consumer with a central host, where the consumer provides certain marketing data such as e.g. demographics, income, age, marital and family status, and occasionally also buying preferences. Companies and organizations also register with the central host, and offer targeted consumers purchasing incentives to purchase their products or services. In this respect, the offering companies are provided with the marketing data of the registered consumers.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,195,644 issued to Bowie describes a system for recording credits in loyalty programs offered by particular organizations directly by credit card companies. The credit card company used by the customers itself manages the bonus account of a particular customer with a given company, so that each purchase with the credit card immediately results in bonus points being awarded to the credit card holder by the given company, relieving the company of the burden of maintaining these records.
In U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,774,870 and 6,009,412, issued to Storey, a system is described, wherein the bonus points awarded to the customer on the basis of a sale may be redeemed for an award selected from an award catalog.
Yet, common to all of these programs is that the bonus-credit is awarded/given to the purchaser of the product/service. In fact, the bonus is awarded to the recipient of the invoice and not necessarily to the recipient of the products/services and relates to a particular order only.
Also the present systems are rather inflexible, in that they consider a low number of parameters only. In general, all persons staying in a hotel receive the same number of bonus-credits, those renting a car receive bonus-credits corresponding to the category of the car, and air travelers receive bonus-credits depending on the mileage. In these systems there is no incentive according to e.g. the region selected, the day of the week, the time of the day, the availability of the product etc.
In Life Science, products are most often ordered by individuals, that are not addressed in the invoice, e.g. people working in the laboratory, so that the purchaser is not identical to the recipient of the products/services. The products/services are generally sold via several places/distributors with the transactions including in general both, a huge number of different articles as well as a great number of the same article, so that a marketing department in the producing company normally does not have knowledge, who is the (end-) user of the product.
In these cases and based on the data of transaction, only the final vendors may have the possibility to track down the purchase up to the purchaser and the end-user, which does not apply to the producer of the goods. Hence, applying existing bonus programs to products of/services rendered in Life Science would not result in the bonus being credited to the actual user of the product/service.
Yet, it is a requisite for acquiring high loyalty to the company/the brand, to have direct contact to the user. The knowledge of the user would also offer the opportunity for the company to support him/her in the purchase or offer him/her other benefits of the producing company. The knowledge about the user also includes additional immediate advantages. Since in Life Sciences the user sometimes has to work with dangerous and/or toxic substances, it is beneficial to be able to directly contact the user in case of emerging problems.
In case of handing out goods via distribution channels, including different storage departments and -systems, it is burdensome, difficult and above all quite costly to obtain the corresponding data. Inputting the data of the user by the sales-man in the last step of the purchase also is quite complicated. The costs of such determination mainly reside in the extensive number of goods to be inputted, especially for goods of mass consumption, their relative low value and the high number of customers. The companies also require extensive security means, so as to avoid abuse of the data collected. This adds to the costs involved.